The pharma industry does this a lot, where there will be some non patented cure for an ailment, and they take that and make a slight chemical variant of it that they can patent, and bring the variant to market while doing everything in their regulatory power, and manipulation of studies to cut off the non patented cure for the market.

The ugly truth is, we need to get rid of patents in the pharma industry, or they will continue to make our lives hell.